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Students of marketing have known this for years: you sell the sizzle, not the steak. At the point of sale, though, you had better be able to deliver the beef.

When you make the decision to buy something, there are many facts to consider. Is it a quality product? Will it last? Will its maker be there to fix problems if they arise? Will I like it after I have bought it, or regret the purchase? If we each had a personal research staff, we could keep it busy for a week before we bought a cup of coffee.

That is where branding comes in. Consider that cup of coffee: it might be yesterday’s leftover thin, oily swill, or it may be the rich, creamy latte we hoped it would be. If we buy it from an unfamiliar corner kiosk, we take our chances. If we buy it from Starbuck’s, we know what to expect. We trust in the effort that has gone into making that coffee for us. We know that Starbuck’s has taken the time and expense to resolve all those quality questions for us before we buy from them. Without thinking about all that, we will pay extra for the Starbuck’s brand, and feel good about it.

Feeling good is what branding is all about. We don’t have to worry about the facts that lie behind our coffee—the violence in Colombia, the tariffs on coffee imports, the wages paid our barista—because Starbucks has taken care of all this behind the scenes. We see that green and white logo, and feel good about the coffee. That good feeling, not the facts, sells us on the coffee.

Near the turn of the 20th century, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov was studying the digestive process in dogs. He diverted the flow of saliva to an external pouch so that he could measure its volume. He noticed that the volume of saliva produced by the dogs in his lab increased when the technician who usually fed them came into the room. To see whether this was a psychological phenomenon, Pavlov chose a more neutral stimulus (the sound of a metronome) to precede the dog’s feedings before the technician entered the room. Soon the steady tick if the metronome was sufficient to make the dogs’ mouths water in anticipation of food.

Pavlov (and Edwin Twitmyer, working independently at the University of Pennsylvania using the knee-jerk reflex) had discovered the conditioned reflex. We have added much hard science since their pioneering work. Classical conditioning applies a stimulus before the desired reflex, in order to provoke it. Operant conditioning, researched by American psychologist B.F.Skinner, applies a stimulus, either pleasant or noxious, after a behavior has occurred in order to create an association that will reward, modify, or extinguish it. In humans, simply imagining the conditioned stimulus can evoke the response. Just thinking about the sizzle can make you want the steak. That principle lies at the heart of the branding phenomenon.

Increasingly, emotional conditioning lies at the heart of American electoral politics, especially at the national level. In today’s politics, the term “dog whistles” reverberates with echoes of Pavlov’s lab.

“Sound bites” on television news were goals before the ascendance of social media. Simple phrases such as “I like Ike” and “We Shall Overcome” carried practically no cognitive information, but evoked huge affective responses. One could like Ike without going to the trouble of learning his positions. Overcoming adversity just sounds good, no matter what it is you are overcoming. Attaching positive operant stimuli to your candidate’s name wins votes.

Negative operant stimuli work at least as well. LBJ’s powerful campaign video, of an innocent little girl counting daisy petals, juxtaposed with a mushroom cloud, tanked Barry Goldwater’s campaign, though hardly anyone could articulate his positions on childcare or nuclear war. When a haggard Richard Nixon cried “I am not a crook!” on national TV from the White House, the very perception of crookedness became the quicksand that sank his presidency; the more he wriggled, the faster he went down. As candidates realized this, negative campaigning became the underpinning of American politics. It remains so today.

Great as the sound bite is, the tweet is greater. Its limited length precludes filling it with cognitive content, but its immediacy makes it a powerful emotional platform. A Congressional budget proposal may run to thousands of pages of arcane detail that no tweet thread could hope to contain, and few would ever read, but tweets (“Dems rap GOP budget as Welfare for the Rich!” or “GOP budget is the last hope for the middle class!”) do the job efficiently, are cheap, reach a wide audience, and are read in their entirety.

Facebook posts allow for more cognitive content and less often read to the end, but they can contain pictures that can be absorbed at a glance. Pictures can be a more visceral stimulus that text, and Instagram is nearly all images. Taken as a whole, the social media comprise a powerful political platform whose influence is primarily in the affective, rather than the cognitive, domain.

The social media have a feature that broadcast media did not have before the advent of mass computation: they are curated. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google record and analyze your online preferences, and send you only the content that is likely to please you, and increase the chances that you will return and eyeball their ads again. . If your browsing history tends towards civil rights and economic opportunity, the material you see will be quite different from if you favored gun rights and Christian values. Your profile is then sold to advertisers who want to sell to someone who thinks ad you do, or to politicians who advocate for your causes.

You only hear from people and groups who already agree with you. This tends to reinforce your pre-existing reflex conditioning (yes, we all have it), amplifying the polarization that is shattering American society today.

Now consider the 2016 presidential campaign: the wonk and the wild man.

Hillary Clinton began her candidacy in a flurry of emails and a video, projecting herself as a high achieving policy wonk with a common touch, and with a grand political history. She presented what she considered to be the most positive facts from that history: her achievements as a Senator from New York and as Obama’s Secretary of State, her knowledge with the process of government in Washington and the officials who run it, and a very detailed set of policy proposals that gradually developed on her campaign website during the run-up to the election. She suppressed the facts she considered unflattering: her closeness with the New York investment banks that filled her war chest, her remoteness from the working class that propelled her rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and the dynastic appearance of a former First Lady (and the wife of an impeached president, to boot) running for President.

Donald Trump launched his campaign as a blonde deity, in the world he had created (Trump Tower), descending a golden escalator accompanied by his impossibly beautiful wife, into the roar of an adoring crowd. It was very long on show, without facts or analytical thinking to get in the way of our feelings of awe. In the campaign that followed, he promised us policies that would be beautiful, unprecedented, the best ever. He offered an economic plan, but when actual economists weighed in against it, he stopped touting it. He never sullied his rhetoric with actual details after that. He sold himself as a champion of the working man, too rich to be corrupted, but he refused to offer details of his wealth. He piggybacked on the ideas of others—the NRA, the Christian right, Breitbart—for the passions they aroused rather than the ideas themselves, which he appeared to only dimly understand. He openly defied ‘political correctness’ without defining what it was, and courted those who did not require ideas or facts. “I love the poorly educated!” he crowed.

When dealing with a wonk, fact-checking is pre-eminent; statistics, facts, data are what drive him. When dealing with a demagogue it is a waste of time. Facts concern him only for the feelings they invoke, and can be spun to suit his pre-determined purpose. “Fake News!” merely makes you cleave tighter to his cause, regardless of the truth of it. Fistfights in the aisle only added to the

The sound of a Hillary rally was the drone of ennui, punctuated occasionally by a shrill hiss like escaping steam, the last gasp of an outmoded, pre-millennial form of feminism. The sound of a Trump rally was the thunder of a demagogue, and the pulse of the crowd shouting back “Lock her Up!” without offering any reason why.

Operant conditioning works both ways, though. It can extinguish behavior as well as incite it. As the crown responds positively to an affective reward, so can it respond adversely to negative reinforcement. A child burnt by a hot stove will not touch it again. A cat punished for soiling the floor will learn to use the litter box. A dog conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell in anticipation of food will soon stop doing so if the reward regularly fails to appear. The branding effect may be a mile wide, but it is only inches deep.

This is especially true in politics. If you promise specifics—universal health care, say, or affordable prescription drugs—at the end of your term the voter can look around and see if you have delivered on your promise; if you haven’t, your office is in jeopardy. When the voter actually feels worse rather than better, look out!

If you have been promised only emotional goals—pride in America, reinforcement of your own racial, ethnic, gender or consumer identity—when the time comes to vote again the voter who was swayed by an appeal to emotion must look within to see if he has been rewarded or disappointed.

This is actually a fairly complicated proposition, since external facts do not apply. If you were promised economic prosperity and then you lost your job, you might feel abandoned and vote no: Oh, no, I’m not going there again! If your vote grew from anger at the political establishment, and now find yourself angrier still, you might vote yes. Hell yes! If you find yourself both economically diminished and politically betrayed, who knows what roiled emotions you will carry into the voting booth, or where they will lead you. A third party seems increasingly possible

The best campaigns, of course, balance the affective with the cognitive. No one did this better than the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, who was both a savvy showman and seasoned politician. Consider this opening narration from a TV commercial that ran during 1984 campaign:

“It’s morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country’s history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It’s morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

There is an easy to assimilate, uplifting tag line: Morning in America. Dull statistics are made buoyant by an exhortation to feel-good optimism. Why should we care about interest rates, employment statistics or inflation? Because it’s Morning Again in America! Because we are Stronger! and Prouder! and Better! Who is tending to those dull, wonky things that are making us feel so good? Ronald Reagan, that’s who!

What followed were popular and Electoral College landslides, of historic proportions. (Actually historic, not Trumpian histrionic.) Sixty percent of votes cast nationwide were for Reagan. In the Electoral College he lost only a single state, Minnesota, which was the home state of his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale.

The take home it this: a demagogue usually beats a wonk, and a demagogue who is also a wonk trumps everybody.

“I know you are but what am I?” “I’m rubber, you are glue. Names bounce off me and stick to you!”

When Pee Wee Hermansays such things, we recognize at once how puerile they are. When Pee Wee says them, though, they are alloyed with childhood innocence, which gives them a pleasant, if a little edgy, nostalgic glow. They are child-like, not childish.

When the President of the United States plays the Pee Wee gambit, it seems childish and churlish. It insults our intelligence. It is also dangerous.

Remember the debates? Looming over Hillary from behind, playing the cameras like the seasoned TV performer he is, while using his height and sheer bulk to intimidate, like the sexual predator he is?

She said, referring to his relationship with the post-Soviet oligarchy: “You’re a puppet.”

Without elaborating, out of turn, as a practiced casual aside (though he surely knew the camera was on him), he said :

“Puppet? I’m not a puppet. You’re the puppet!”

Clinton was, clearly and unequivocally, accusing him of being an agent of a specific foreign power, Russia. He might have been implying that she was too beholden to unnamed gigantic donors on Wall Street and in Hollywood, but he never actually specified who was pulling the strings. He wanted to establish a sense of equivalency where none actually existed. His target was affective, not cognitive. Specificity does not suit his purpose. He wants you angry, not informed.

Such false equivalency is an important weapon in the Trump arsenal, the heart and soul of the Pee Wee Gambit.

This is nowhere more evident than in the speech he gave outside Trump Tower a few days after a ragtag mob of Ku Klux Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, gun rights advocates and simple thugs had gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia under the rubric ‘alt-right’, ostensibly to protect a statue of a man who led an armed uprising that attacked America in a desparate attempt to preserve black slavery when the tide of history was turning against it. In the melee nineteen protesters were injured and Heather Heyer, a principled young woman who had come to protest the violence and hatred, was murdered when an avowed white supremacist rammed his car onto a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters that was boxed into a narrow, crowded street.

Shortly afterwards Trump read from a teleprompter a lackluster statement that denounced hatred and violence without naming any of the violent haters. Later, though, Trump spoke off-the-cuff to a boisterous gaggle of reporters in front of Trump Tower. He clearly viewed the crowd as hostile to him. He was flanked by members of his cabinet–an Asian woman and two Jews–who visibly squirmed in their discomfort at his remarks. His Chief of Staff stood apart, arms clasped tensely in front of him, glowering down at his own wing-tips. The event sounded more like an argument than a press conference as Trump responded to the questions hurled at him:

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you putting what you’re calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?

TRUMP: I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I’m saying is this. You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was viscous and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.

(unintelligible Crosstalk)

TRUMP: Well, I do think there’s blame — yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. You look at — you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either.

With the idea (or more accurately, the affective impression) of equivalency thus planted, Mr. Trump uncharacteristically got much more specific:

TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. (inaudiblie) themselves (inaudible) and you have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me — I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same (inaudible)…

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me — are we going to take down — are we going to

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: OK. Good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what? It’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You’ve got — you had a lot of bad — you had a lot of bad people in the other group… take down statues to George Washington?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: … treated unfairly (inaudible) you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? (inaudible) understand what you’re saying.

TRUMP: No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know — I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country (sic).

The equivalency is reinforced in affect even as the facts are obscured in a blizzard of inaccuracy and irrelevance. The obscurity is amplified by POTUS’ peculiar patterns of speech; his meaning is clouded more by his fractured syntax than the depth of his thought, closer to E.E. Cummings than T.S. Eliot. Though he went to an Ivy League school, he does not seem to have learned the value of a complete sentence. He does use simple ones, though, in his familiar, snarky asides: You know what mean. You get it. Am I right? You’re the puppet! (See Spot run?)

Washington and Jefferson vs Robert E. Lee? These men were of different eras. The former were slaveholders in the eighteenth century, true enough, but beside the point. Both were even then growing leery of the morality behind an institution on which their economy still depended, and neither led an armed rebellion against the Union they created. Lee resorted to a treasonous war in an attempt to extend the chattel servitude of blacks into the last half of a nineteenth century, fifty years after Washington and Jefferson thought they were witnessing the twilight of slavery in America. The founding fathers’ ownership of slaves was not the equivalent of Lee’s, nor is it relevant to what happened at Charlottesville.

The self proclaimed alt-right had a permit to assemble, while the counter-protestors did not? Even if this were true, the permits only applied to designated parts of Robert E Lee/Emancipation Park, and not to Market Street, where the melee with Antifa took place, or to Fourth Street, where Heather Heyer was mowed down by an angry white supremacist. No one had a permit to battle in the streets with helmets, shields and clubs. No one had a license to kill.

Violence occurred streets throughout the city, involving small bands of armed, angry people holding diverse political views. While the marching, and later the street fighting, was going on, the status of permits was not relevant, not even very interesting. No one gets the moral high ground because of the status permits.

Trump pivots from the issue of ‘moral equivalence’, and makes the point that many people “on both sides” came with the aim of peacefully protesting the removal of Lee’s statue. This is true as far as it goes, but it obscures the fact that the rally, called “Unite the Right”, was meant to cement various organizations on the far right—The KKK, the Aryan Nations, the NRA, and the Westboro Baptist Church, for example—into a coherent political movement. They marched through the streets at night, some girded for war and many carrying tiki torches, chanting things like “The Jews will not replace us!”

On the left there was no such uniting principle. There was a grass-roots yearning to not let hate speech go unopposed, but was there premeditated violence among among participants with progressive political views? Yes, there was, as evidenced by those who brought shields and clubs, but their stated motive was to resist the spread Neo-Facismism and white supremacy. Is hating Nazis equivalent to hating blacks? Is resisting hate mongering the equivalent of the hate mongering itself?

Having inured us to false equivalencies and the Pee Wee Gambit, Trump is now free to take it where he will. This week he has soared to new heights with the assertion that not only are the allegations of his campaign’s collusion with the Russians to fix the 2016 elections a nefarious false narrative, invented by the Democrats to excuse their ‘historic’ drubbing at the polls. Instead, says POTUS, the Democrats themselves are guilty of collusion, but have escaped investigative scrutiny for their heinous crimes because of their controlling interest in the permanent, unelected shadow government that has dogged Trump since he first descended the golden elevator to announce the start of his campaign to Make America Great Again.

The facts of this uranium deal are much more complex. Here is how Wikipedia summarizes the deal:

(Warning–Rough seas ahead: Like much in politics it can be a difficult slog to understand who the players were, and how the game unfolded.)

On July 5, 2005, Southern Cross Resources Inc. and Aflease Gold and Uranium Resources Ltd announced that they would be merging under the name SXR Uranium One Inc.[3]

In 2007 Uranium One acquired a controlling interest in UrAsia Energy,[4] a Canadian firm with headquarters in Vancouver, from Frank Giustra.[5] UrAsia Energy has interests in rich uranium operations in Kazakhstan.[6] UrAsia Energy’s acquisition of its Kazakhstan uranium interests from Kazatomprom followed a trip to Almaty in 2005 by Giustra and former U.S. PresidentBill Clinton where they met with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the leader of Kazakhstan. Substantial contributions to the Clinton Foundation by Giustra followed,[5][7] with Clinton, Giustra, and Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim in 2007 establishing the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative to combat poverty in the developing world.[8] In addition to his initial contribution of $100 million Giustra pledged to contribute half of his future earnings from mining to the initiative.[8]

In June 2009, the Russian uranium mining company ARMZ Uranium Holding Co. (ARMZ), a part of Rosatom, acquired 16.6% of shares in Uranium One in exchange for a 50% interest in the Karatauuranium mining project, a joint venture with Kazatomprom.[9] In June 2010, Uranium One acquired 50% and 49% respective interests in southern Kazakhstan-based Akbastau and Zarechnoye uranium mines from ARMZ. In exchange, ARMZ increased its stake in Uranium One to 51%. The acquisition resulted in a 60% annual production increase at Uranium One, from approximately 10 million to 16 million lb.[10][11] The deal was subject to anti-trust and other conditions and was not finalized until the companies received Kazakh regulatory approvals, approval under Canadian investment law, clearance by the US Committee on Foreign Investments, and approvals from both the Toronto and Johannesburg stock exchanges. The deal was finalized by the end of 2010.[11] Uranium One paid its minority shareholders a significant dividend of 1.06 US Dollars per share at the end of 2010.

(Congratulations! You have made it through the perilous shoals of links and footnotes. Do you have a firm grasp now on how this relates to the Steele Dossier–almost as complex an issue in its own right– and the purloined Hillary/DNC emails? Trump insists they are are the same issue, smoking-gun proof of a conspiracy against him.)

Was Guistra’s contribution to the Clinton Foundation the payback for Hillary’s cooperation in a deal that enriched the Canadian by allowing him to sell his interest in American uranium to the Russians? That is the snake oil that Trump is trying to sell.

Look through the complexity, though, and that notion does not hold up. The ‘American’ uranium interests were Guistra’s holding in UrAsia, whose ores came mainly from not the within the US, but the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. The deal was not done in back rooms, but had to be signed off by financial regulators in Kazakhstan, South Africa, Canada, and the US. Hillary’s involvement came via her role of Secretary of State, at a time when there was a functioning State Department with professionals to oversee the diplomatic, political, and financial aspect of the deal, and a functioning ethics infrastructure to monitor its honesty.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?Both events happened, but were not cause and effect. The implication that the uranium deal was at Hillary’s sole discretion is patently false.

Hillary’s influence was hardly the deciding factor. As Secretary of State her input on the deal was as a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which also includes the Secretaries of Treasury, Defense, Labor, Commerce, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the US Trade Representative, The Director of the Office of Science and Technology, the National Security Advisor, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. CIFIUS’ primary concern is that technology or funds from American enterprise do not violate sanctions or fall into enemy hands. It reviewed the UrAsia deal, and found no fault. President Obama, who had the final say, signed off on the deal. The idea that Hillary personally overstepped her authority to sell American uranium stocks to Russia for her private gain is easy to comprehend, but simply not true.

Nor is the false equivalency of this evidence of collusion with Russia with Trump’s own possible relationship with Putin valid.

If UraniumOne was a conspiracy, it had to be much bigger than this.

If the accusations against Clinton were true, they would have resulted in a multi-billion dollar initiative to eradicate poverty on the developing world. It the accusations against Trump are true, they have resulted in a subversion of American democracy that may have put him in a position to plunder the country’s economy, and put his twitchy finger on the nuclear button. Moral equivalence? You be the judge.

“Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more,“ Trump said in a pair of tweets on Sunday.

Whenever Donald Trump asserts a position that he held on the campaign trail, the pundits all join in a chorus: “He’s playing to his base.” What is Trump’s base? A scruffy gang of alt-right trolls led by Bannon? A flock of button-down investment bankers like Mnuchin? The sea of middle-American working-class people stretching from the rust belt to the corn belt to the Bible belt? The doe-eyed innocents who lined up with cash for Trump University, hoping it would lift them from the mire?

Trump once boasted that his base consisted of people so loyal to him that he could go out onto Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and they would still vote for him. They are among those who view him favorably in the polls, a number that hovers around 40% of the electorate in polls, and thus amount to a minority of eligible voters. Only 55% of those eligible actually voted, and the “base “is less than 40% of that. This minority—fewer than 1 in 5 eligible voters(do the math) –is driving radical policy change today in Washington.

Curiously, in the 2016 presidential elections, the least popular candidates captured the nomination of each party on the national stage, and in the general election, the less popular of the two won the electoral vote with a decisive margin, though he narrowly lost the popular vote. This is not how a democracy is supposed to work.

I think the problem arises from this: the process of our elections had taken precedence over the issues. The news media spew statistics, probabilities, and projections where once facts and opinions held sway. Even the “debates”, when reported in the media, are parsed into “sound bytes” of a dozen words or less, and are presented as if who “won” was more important than what the candidates actually said.

Rep Fred Grandy R-Iowa

Pop culture figures–Ronald Reagan, SonnyBono, Fred “Gopher” Grandy, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and Al Franken, to name a few, have huge electoral advantages that have nothing to do with any political competence they mey or may not bring to office. Both parties have become far too beholden to the large the contributions of donors whose identities are kept secret, known only to the pols themselves. Well funded organizations like the AARP and the NRA, have disproportionate influence, over officeholders

The GOP is paralyzed by hidebound ideological sectors—the Freedom Caucus, Neoconservatives, Paleoconservatives and the Tea Party, for instance, while at the same time being nearly homogenous in its whiteness, maleness, and advanced age.

Groping for Cash

The Democrats have rendered themselves irrelevant by abandoning their working class roots for the easy money in finance and industrial/entertainment behemoths. Procedural rules in Congress have become an instrument, not to protect the voices of minorities, but to suppress dissent or obstruct the process of governance. This is no longer government. It has become blood sport.

Cool it! This is an election, not a football match.

The very democracy of our republic is at dire risk, but it is not too late to save it. I offer some ideas which may help. My Democratic bias shows through here. While the Dems are enfeebled by their fundraising zeal, the GOP is moribund from its hidebound ideologies. The failure at the top of government is a bipartisan thing, but right now the Dems are better positioned to recover and set us back on the right track.

1) The Democrats must field candidates with fresh ideas, who are true to the progressive, middle-class values that once drove the party. They must run on ideas and grass-roots cash, forsaking the triumvirate of secret corporate boardrooms, old-school backroom power politics, and a Wall Street that raises oodles of cash for them while their souls atrophy, but repels the middle class voters who have traditionally propelled Democratic candidates into office.

If the Clinton-Sanders experience taught us anything, it is that when cash and ideology clash with fresh ideas and idealism, the energy of the latter can knock the former out of the ring. Do you remember when audacious young Cassius Clay knocked out older veteran Sonny Liston in the first round? And Sanders has shown us that watching ideas flourish can be much more fun than simply watching money flow.

Leaders must lead, but direction and power flow from the bottom up. Fresh ideas and grass-roots funding, propagated by social media, must infuse Democratic campaigns for the White House, Congress, legislatures, state houses, and city halls across America.

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2) Republicans in office, including Mr. Trump, must be encouraged to bluster and fret about healthcare coverage and tax reform, continuing to propose their programs to shift wealth to the already immensely wealthy segment that funds them. At the same time they must be restrained from actually enacting these programs, or dismantling too much of the regulatory infrastructure that protects the middle class from plutocratic predation.

Come election time, Democrats must have the insight and courage to expose these programs for what they are: instruments of the wealthy and powerful to consolidate their wealth and power. They do this at the expense of the working people and the poor, who are ill-equipped to resist. If you want to wield power, there must be someone for you to wield it over.

Fresh ideas must replace the stale ideology of old white men in both parties, and a tide of diverse young faces must flood city halls, statehouses, and Congress. Votes, not cash, win elections, and ideas win votes.

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3) The mechanics of our elections must be fixed. The toxic effect of dark money must be eliminated. All foreign influence, but especially influence with malicious intent, must be expunged. The fixed biases introduced by partisan gerrymandering must be eliminated. The insidious remnants of the political machines must be ferreted out. The obstacles to voting that employ things like voter ID and poll taxes must not be allowed. The usefulness of the Electoral, College in today’s elections needs to be examined. The old goal of ‘one person, one vote’ is still the target to shoot for.

Electronic social media have introduced challenges never faced before. The voters barely feel or understand the invisible hand that pushes them in a certain direction, gently but inexorably. Our very choices on line—websites visited, goods purchased, entertainment views, and so much more—go into the algorithmic hopper and come out as tailor-made “online experiences” designed to nudge our real-world behavior, without our being aware of it, toward goals decreed by others: commercial goals to make us buy a certain product. Political goals to make us vote a certain way. Foreign goals to advance the interest of sovereign governments, like, say, Russia’s? Because this problem was born in technology that can spread ideas across the globe in microsecond, it will probably require a technological fix, which may be different from company to company and country to country. However, we must find that fix, and find it fast.

America has much to be proud of in its elections systems, but it was never perfect. Now it faces challenges from within and without. We must find them and answer them before our democracy evolves into something else. Oligarchy, plutocracy, and autocracy are all waiting in the wings.

4) The biggest challenge facing our democracy is to understand and accept our diversity–of skin colors, faiths, gender identities, ethnic backgrounds, and more. The 20th century idea of the “melting pot”, where everyone, regardless of background, would simply homogenize into a bland uniformity with white, cis-male, Protestant “American” values, will not work. Nor should it. It is good to be proud of your blackness, your Muslim faith, your gay lover, yourself just as you are. Hate and intolerance poison the process. Cooperation and compromise enable it.

Phenotypic diversity in animal populations strengthens them. A fat zebra is less able to outrun a lion than a lean and nimble on, but when famine comes that leanness becomes a liability, and obesity prevails. The species survives both predation and drought because of its diversity; zebrahood lives on.

Populations, too, draw strength from their diversity. To make it work requires not integration, but acceptance. We must see the humanness in people, and not dwell on their Jewishness, or gayness, their accents or the melanin levels in their skins. It must be normal to say, “I believe Jesus Christ is my personal savior, and you believe in the prophet Muhammed, and that’s okay. Right now we are debating tax reform, though, so let’s get to work.” We must listen to, the others who touch our lives, even tangentially, and understand them even if we do not agree. Their views may be informed by their and experiences that differ from yours, but then your ideas spring from your faith and experience, too. Whether your name is Yitzchak, Chiaoxiang, or Mary, we still need to agree on a world that treats all of us fairly.

That is how Democracy works. Diversity makes the process messier and more difficult, but it makes the end result fairer, and more stable. If we really listen to one another, if we can keep intolerance and hate out of the process, if we respect the checks and bzlances and if we can find within ourselves the strength to compromise without abandoning our own interests, diversity will make our country a stronger, better place to live.

That was the gift the Founding Fathers gave America when it was born. It has served us well for nearly two and a half centuries. Let’s not squander it now.

This insanity must stop! Gun rights are not absolute, and madmen are everywhere. In a country that birthed Jim Crow and the genocide of its indigenous peoples, the events in Las Vegas shock, but they do not surprise us. The accentuation of our racial and religious differences, and the fomenting of our mistrust and hatred, is not saving us from the many faces of terrorism.

We draw our very strength as a nation from the diversity of our races and faiths, as Samson drew his strength from the length of his hair. Donald Trump is our Delilah. We trusted him, even loved him, and he betrayed us.

We must grow up and get over this–as individuals, as a country, and as a people, united and proud. We must end this evil, all together, once and for all!

Kremlin is a word that really has no English equivalent. Perhaps ‘castle’ or ‘citadel’ comes closest. but even the largest castle is dwarfed by a small kremlin. These words miss something grander, more essentially Russian, about kremlins.

Old Russian cities formed around their kremlins and walled monasteries; in medieval times the line that divided the church from the rich and powerful was indistinct at best, and kremlins girded both the secular and sacred.

The kremlin at Tobolsk

In the countryside around these central structures the serfs tilled the land for the noblemen who dwelt within. Near the gates merchants, tradesmen, artisans and ladies of the night gathered to ply their goods and services. Inside the wall princes and priests plotted their intrigues and their wars. Novgorod, Moscow, Smolensk, Pskov and many other cities had kremlins. There is even a small kremlin in Tobolsk, deep in Siberia, 1500 miles east of Moscow.

***

Between the Carpathian Mountains to the southwest and the Urals to the northeast lies a vast expanse of gently rolling lands known as the Russian Plain, through which meander many long and mighty rivers. Because of the bland topography, these rivers criss-cross the plain in all directions. Their names are rife with history and romance: the Rhine, the Danube, the Dnieper and Dniester, the Volga, the Don. Owing to the relatively flat terrain, these waterways are easily navigable, with gentle currents and few shallows, shoals or rapids. In a pre-industrial world, they provided a watery network, connecting the Baltic, Mediterranean, Black and landlocked Caspian Seas, that facilitated the movement of goods, troops, and culture throughout Eastern Europe.

Control of this area endowed its owner with substantial strategic and economic advantage, but maintaining control was difficult. War-like peoples surrounded it on all sides. To the north were the Norse, renowned for their berserk ferocity. To the south was Byzantium, heir to the efficient Roman war machine. To the west were the barbarous Slavs, and to the east lay the Mongol horde. In the middle lay a loose-knit, polyglot cluster of kingdoms centered in Kiev, known as the lands of the Rus’.

The kremlin at Smolensk

Control of this politically roiling landscape required at least two things: An all-powerful commander of a formidable military force (eventually, the tsars), and a series of impregnable fortresses in which to consolidate control (the kremlins).

A succession of strongmen built fortifications at strategic points along river. The walls of these fortresses were initially made of wood, but were eventually replaced by stone, to become the kremlins we know today.

In the 9th century, the Kievan Rus’ built a citadel on the Dnieper to defend against aggression from the south. This kremlin gave rise to Kiev, which became the the first iteration of what would eventually become Russia. It stood until the Mongols sacked Kiev in 1240; very little remains. The Rus’ then moved their capital to Novgorod, where they constructed another oaken kremlin on the Volkhov River. Stone walls replaced the wooden ones there, beginning in 1302.

The kremlin of Pskov

To the north, in Pleskow (now Pskov), which was allied with the Novgorod Rus’, a kremlin arose where the little Pskov River flows into the larger Velikaya near its mouth on Lake Peipus, the source of the River Neva. Here, in 1240, Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod turned back an invasion of Teutonic Knights in an epic battle on the ice, immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film masterpiece. (Historians disagree on the reliability of the accounts of this event.) The site controls access by the landlocked lands of Rus’ to the Gulf of Finland, and thus the Baltic Sea. Peter the Great, who dreamed of building a navy and was wont to make his dreams come true, later made his capital near there to give Russia’s interior access to the ocean.

The Grand Principality of Moscow, soon to be Muscovy and then Russia, annexed Novgorod in 1478. This was part of “the gathering of the Rus’ lands by Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan the III, known as Ivan the Great. It was then that the history of modern Russia began, although the word “Russia’ was first used by his grandson Ivan IV, the ‘Terrible’.

At the site of today’s Moscow Kremlin a succession of walls went up and came down. Slavs built an oaken palisade in in the 11th century, known as the Moscow Grad. In the 14th century, a sturdy stronghold of white limestone replaced it.

Ivan the Great

Ivan III replaced the limestone, between 1485 and 1495, with the walls we know today. They are 5 to 19 meters high, 3.5 to 6.5 meters thick, built of stone faced with red brick. Along the top, for its entire perimeter, runs a walkway, 2 to 4.5 meters wide, for is full perimeter, flanked by a 2.5-meters-tall crenelated wall facing outwards, and topped in a swallow-tailed style. The walls contain interior passageways leading to lightless rooms where the tsars’ most dangerous prisoners lived in solitary confinement while they slowly went mad. Twenty defensive towers loom above the walkway, each with a different height and style. Four heavy gates pierce the wall, flanked by gate towers. These are now crowned by illuminated Soviet red stars, which replaced the gilded double-headed eagles of the Romanovs.

The Moscow Kremlin. The tower on the left, called the Secret Tower, holds a secret escape route. The other two towers are the only nameless of the twenty. Within the wall, on the right, is the tall Bell Tower of Ivan the Great. Behind it, to the left, the four golden domes of the Assumption Cathedral peek over the trees. Between the nameless towers the single golden dome of the Archangel’s Cathedral is surrounded by four gray metal domes. and next to it the much smaller Annunciation Cathedral. Behind that is the baroque yellow Grand Palace.

Within the 68 acre triangle enclosed by the Kremlin Wall lie many large buildings, both sacred and secular.

Coronation of Alexander II in the Palace of Facets

The oldest secular building is the Palace of Facets, constructed between 1487 and 1492 to serve the tsars for state ceremonies and official entertainments. Next oldest is the Terem Palace, first residence of the tsars. The Grand Kremlin Palace, commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I and built between 1837 and 1849 in a Baroque style, joins these structures together into one vast government complex.

The Communist Party convenes in the Hall of Congresses in 1966.

The newest building inside the Kremlin is a Soviet-era glass and concrete monstrosity built in Khrushchev’s time as a home for the Congresses of the Communist Party. Because of its large 6000-seat capacity and superb acoustics, today it hosts popular concerts.

Cathedral of the Annunciation

There are several churches within the Kremlin; in a more secular Russia, some of them now serve as museums. The oldest is the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, which is contemporaneous with the present wall. The most important is the Cathedral of the Assumption, which before the 1917 revolution was a symbol of Russia’s claim of dominance in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The Cathedral of the Annunciation was once reserved as a private place for princes and tsars to worship, and the Cathedral of the Archangel was the final resting place medieval Russian autocrats. The Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles contained the lavish Patriarch’s Palace, and the Church of the Deposition of the Robe was a private chapel for the Patriarchate.

The church most often associated with the Kremlin by Americans is the Cathedral of Basil the Great, with its colorful bouquet of onion domes. It actually lies outside the Kremlin. It was built from 1555-1561 on orders of Ivan IV, known as ‘the Formidible’ (more literal), or more commonly today, ‘the Terrible’, (which is a more apt description of the man). To commemorate his conquests of Kazan and Astrakahn, and to praise the glory of God, it was built in the shape of flames leaping skyward. It was consecrated in 1561 and secularized by the Soviets in 1928, today it is owned by the Russian Federation and serves as a museum.

Today the Kremlin is the capitol of the Russian Federation. Its hegemony, under the firm hand of Vladimir Putin, reaches across the vast expanse of Russia, and who knows how far beyond.

*********

In the year 359 the Goths were a loosely- knit horde of warrior kingdoms nipping at the heels of a stumbling Roman Empire. The age of Christian persecution was waning, with the Emperor Constantius II himself professing Christian beliefs. A controversy within the Church, which began at the Council of Seleucia, was troubling the Emperor: did the gospel’s assertion that “the Son was like the Father” mean that they were built of the same substance, rather than that they were alike in some other way. He called a Council in Constantinople in 359 to settle the question.

St. Basil the Great

Among those who attended was a thirty-year old priest from Ancyra, Galatia, in what is now Turkey. Dark-skinned, ascetic, and mystical, Basil first took the side of same substance, but at the conference changed his stance. He took the more mystical view that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were a single entity, more unified in His essential nature than simply being three separate things made of the same substance would imply. This central mystery today lies at the heart of many Christian faiths.

Ruins of the ancient citadel of Caesura, where Basil built the first hospital

Basil went on to work among the sinners and the poor. He preached to a large polyglot congregation every morning and evening, at other times working among thieves and prostitutes. He spoke truth to power, not fearing to chastise public officials who failed their public duty to administer justice. Outside the city of Caesarea, he built a huge humanitarian complex called the Basiliad, which included a hospital, a hospice, a poorhouse, and a soup kitchen, which his contemporaries compared with the Seven Wonders of the World.

Like many of the righteous who came before or followed him, it was probably difficult to get along with Basil face-to-face. He was firm in his faith, and he could be both imperious and hot-blooded in its defense. His orthodoxy, though, did not blind him to both the good and evil in those around him. If it did not compromise the truth, he could shift from liturgical language and converse in the common dialect of the street or the imperious language of the Roman court.

Basil was drawn to an ascetic, communal monasticism. By 358, a band of like-minded monks had gathered around him. He settled them into his family’s Galatian estate along with his brother, sister and widowed mother, to live with him in a life of piety, prayer, and devotion to charitable works.

During the Soviet Era, it was fitting that the Cathedral of Saint Basil stood at the head of Red Square, a symbol of the communistic ideal that was espoused, if not practiced, by the politburo in the Kremlin next door. It descended into irony as the oligarchic kleptocracy of Putin rose to power.

Red Square today. On the left is St. Basil’s Cathedral, colorful and inviting. On the right is the citadel of Moscow, the Kremlin, stern and forbidding.

Basil’s writings, and the example of his life, have had profound influence on Christian Orthodox thought in both the East and the West. Nearly two millennia after his death, it is difficult to be sure how much of the text in the many liturgies and prayers which bear his name were actually written by his hand, and how much came later, inspired by his example. Either way, his influence is vast.

Julian the Apostate

When the Emperor Julian ascended to the Roman throne, he blamed Christianity for the flagging of the Empire. He renounced his father’s faith in Christ, and tried to restore the pagan, neoplatonist polytheism that had seen Rome through its days of glory. Entangled in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, an uncompromising Basil was arrested and tortured by Roman soldiers. On June 29, 362, he was executed, a martyr to his Christian faith. Julian himself died in battle a year later, and Rome returned, at least nominally, to Christian rule during its final days.

St. Basil is canonized by both the Western and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Basiliad is gone, but his thought continues to guide the Judeo-Christian world nearly two millenia after his death. He continues to make the world a better place.

“I have used the laws of this country just like the greatest people that you read about every day in business have used the laws of this country, the chapter laws, to do a great job for my company, for myself, for my employees, for my family, et cetera….

…I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.”

–Donald Trump, who filed for bankruptcy four times

$$$$$$

That makes sense. Big Businesses, like Trump’s, exploit multitudes of common people for their labor, and vacuum up their cash for the private benefit of a few large stockholders and elite executives. That is Capitalism, and it is good.

–Leona Helmsley, NYC Real Estate & Hotel Mogul, who was jailed in 1992 for tax evasion and business fraud.

“It makes me smart.”

–Donald Trump, on not paying any taxes. He was elected President of the United States in 2016.

Leona Helmsley, “The Queen of Mean”, was successfully prosecuted by then U.S. Attorney (and now Trump sycophant) Rudy Giuliani for income tax evasion and fraudulent business practices. She reported to prison on April 15, 1992, the day personal taxes fall due. Prisoner No.15113-054, estimated net worth over five billion dollars, served nineteen months in federal prison. Upon release she had to sell all her NY hotels, most of which sold drinks, because New York law does not allow convicted felons to hold liquor licenses.

At the same time Donald Trump was building his real estate and hotel empire in New York and beyond, allegedly committing many of the same heinous acts that sent Helmsley to jail. Now he is the leader of the free world.

Short of dying in office, there are three ways an American president can cease to be one before his or her term is up: 1) Article I, Section 2-Impeachment, 2) Amendment 25, Section 4-Declaration of Incapacity, and 3) Common Law-Resignation. Only one of these—resignation—has ever actually occurred. Each has grave consequences for the republic, but they are different.

1) ARTICLE I: Impeachment

The most frequently discussed means of removing a president is impeachment. The constitution provides for impeachment only in the case of “Treason, Bribery, of other high Crimes or Misdemeanors.” Only the House of Representatives can bring an impeachment resolution, which requires a simple majority to pass. Any member of the House can introduce an impeachment resolution, which is then referred to an ad hoc committee to work out the details. More often in modern times the House Judiciary Committee itself initiates an impeachment resolution, and drafts recommendations for the floor of the House. Until recently, the Attorney General could appoint an independent Special Prosecutor with the power to recommend impeachment directly to the House, but the legislation that empowered that was allowed to expire after the Clinton impeachment, out of concern for the political effect of imbuing an individual who was not elected with such signal power. If the House passes an impeachment resolution, then the Judiciary Committee recommends a slate of “managers” to prosecute the accused in the trial that follows. Only upon conviction at this trial is the impeached person stripped of his office.

Impeachments are tried before the Senate. When the defendant is the President of the United States, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides and serves as judge. A panel of “managers” appointed by the House on the recommendation of its Judiciary Committee prosecutes the case against the accused, and the entire Senate serves as a jury. A two-thirds majority of senators present is necessary to convict.

Once convicted, the offender is immediately removed from office. In the case of the president, the vice president assumes the higher office, and the vice presidency remains vacant. Ouster from office is the only sentence the Senate can confer. Article I provides that “Judgement in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment, according to Law.”

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

The provision for impeachment is intentionally Byzantine. Over time it has become even more so, growing into equal parts constitutional law, politics, and pageantry. The framers did not intend for impeachment to be easy or routine. In all of U.S. history only two presidents have been impeached by the House—Andrew Johnson (1861) and Bill Clinton (1988)—and neither was convicted in the Senate. A bill of impeachment was introduced in the House against John Tyler in 1841, but it did not pass. Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974 with impeachment resolutions pending; his resignation rendered them moot.

During America’s first two centuries, the constitutional provision for impeaching a president was invoked only once—against Andrew Johnson–in the turbulent, polarized circumstances immediately following the Civil War. In modern times, the country has seriously considered it three times in fewer than fifty rears—against Nixon, Clinton, and Trump. It has never succeeded in removing a president from office. Are we in danger of reducing impeachment to a routine political tool?

25th AMENDMENT: Incapacity

Article II Section 1 of the Constitution provides for the succession of presidential power in the event of the death, resignation, or incapacity of the President:

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The wording of this clause, particularly as it relates to incapacity, introduced ambiguities that the founders did not foresee. When William Henry Harrison died in office, his powers and duties devolved onto Vice President John Tyler. Tyler took more, though. He declared that not only the powers and duties, but also the office itself, was now his. At the suggestion of Daniel Webster, he took the Presidential Oath of Office as prescribed by the Constitution. Since then every vice president who has succeeded a fallen president has taken the oath, following the Tyler Precedent.

Despite criticism at the time, he claimed to be President, rather than merely Acting President. This was an important distinction, because the constitution provided for only one president, who had to be elected. If a Vice President succeeded a President with a temporary disability, the he became President and finished out the term. The previous president was gone, even if he recovered from his incapacity. The vice presidency remained vacant.

Garfield’s deathbed

When President Garfield lingered after being shot, Vice President Arthur declined to assume the presidency while Garfield lived. Similarly Vice President Marshall demurred when Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated, but not killed, by a stroke. Neither wanted to bear the mantle of the Tyler Precedent while a president lived who might recover.

In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt’s health began to rapidly decline, and Vice President Truman feared he might have to face a similar decision involving one of the nation’s most revered presidents. A cerebral hemorrhage ended FDR’s life before Truman faced such a crisis. He never forgot, though, and unsuccessfully pushed for a constitutional amendment on succession. Eisenhower had two heart attacks while in office, but did not die.

In 1965, following the assassination of John Kennedy, Congress finally adopted the text of the 25th Amendment. By May of 1967, it was ratified by 47 state legislatures.

Section 4 of the Amendment deals with the involuntary removal of a president who has become incapacitated in the judgement of his colleagues. It reads:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

A simple majority of the Cabinet, or “such other body as Congress may by law provide” (although it never has), can empower the President pro tem of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, acting together, to relieve the President of his powers. The President can resume the power simply by declaring himself fit to do so. The Congress, by a two-thirds vote of both houses taken within 21 days, can take them way again. It is not specified how often this cycle can be repeated.

This process does not remove the president from office. Rather it transfers the powers and responsibilities of the office to the Vice President, who becomes Acting President, an office not defined in the constitution. The door is left open for the President to reassume his duties if circumstances change. Since he is still President, presumably his term limits clock continues to run.

Was Reagan impaired in Office?

The Section 4 process has never been invoked. The Framers of the Amendment apparently had in mind a physical incapacity like Garfield’s wound or Wilson’s stroke, where it would be a useful tool. Invoked against a vigorous but allegedly demented president, the results might be unpredictable. It could conceivably paralyze the executive and legislative branches for the remainder of that president’s term in office. The potential constitutional precedents of using this clause for alleged mental defects are terrifying,

3: EXTRACONSTITUTIONAL: Resignation

The Constitution refers to the resignation of a president, but only one, Richard Nixon, has actually done it. How that was engineered is instructive.

Nixon was a flawed human being, ambitious and bullying, with questionable ethics, but he had greatness in him His first run for national office, as Eisenhower’s running mate, was tainted with allegations of corruption that dogged him throughout his subsequent career. Along the way, he acquired the sobriquet “Tricky Dick”.

Nixon’s achievements on the national level were real, however, and substantial, especially in foreign affairs. As Vice President, his “Kitchen Debate” with Nikita Khrushchev is remembered more than half a century later. As President, he signed two substantial arms control treaties, and opened the era of “peaceful coexistence” with the USSR. He supported Israel through the Yom Kippur War. He opened trade and cultural exchanges with China and the Middle East, and weakened Soviet hegemony there. He signed the Paris Accords that ended US involvement in the Viet Nam War and led to the suspension of the draft.

During his campaign for election to a second term, though, Nixon’s ethics came again to haunt him. Agents of his campaign organization (which he called CRP but reporters named CREEP-the Committee to RE-Elect the President) was allegedly caught breaking into the opposing party’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel to steal data and plant surveillance devices. Nixon denied any knowledge of that activity, and it was never established whether he knew of the burglary beforehand.

Subsequent evidence clearly showed, though, that he had led a frantic effort to prevent any knowledge of the break-in from reaching the public. Surreptitious recordings Nixon had made of his White House conversations, laced with obscenity (“[expletive deleted]”), showed a clearly unravelling president, bullying his aides into ethically questionable acts to protect his crumbling reputation.

Archibald Cox was appointed as Special Prosecutor to investigate the matter, only to be fired by Nixon when he got too close. Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and his deputy William Ruckelshaus, then resigned out of conscience. The event came to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

A new Special Prosecutor was named. Congressional committees took up the cudgel and held a series of hearings, some televised and some closed. Popular demonstrations erupted across the nation, where the word impeachment became increasingly common in chants and on placards. The pressure on the president was immense. “I have reason to suspect,” wrote Senator Barry Goldwater, “that all might not be well mentally in the White House.”

Nixon’s defense strategy was to act presidential, preferably on TV. In one unfortunate effort, a haggard Nixon assured Americans that “I am not a crook!” He was at his most presidential when seen in his role as a statesman. He therefore embarked on a series of overseas trips, with a posse of reporters and photographers, to the Middle East and the USSR. One result of all this jet travel was a case of phlebitis that sidelined him for weeks.

Meanwhile, the investigation ground on. Televised hearings and the publication of transcripts of the White House tapes whipped the public to frenzy. Eventually the Judiciary Committee voted to send three articles of impeachment to the House floor, for 1) obstruction of justice, 2) abuse of power, and 3) contempt of Congress. All were based on the cover-up. Nixon’s direct involvement in the Watergate burglary has never been established.

With the votes in both the House and Senate trending strongly against him, Nixon knew the jig was up. If he was impeached he would very likely be convicted, and his place in history would be to be the only president ever convicted after impeachment. If he cut his losses by leaving office before impeachment, he might still preserve some of the positive legacy he had worked a lifetime to achieve. It was a Corleonean offer that he could not refuse. Nixon resigned.

A big advantage of the engineered resignation is that it does not directly set any constitutional precedents. A disadvantage is that it is clumsy, has to be tailored to each situation, and is very susceptible to politics. Finding that Godfather deal may be difficult, and a bold, principled office-holder may be resistant to the approach.

The Situation We Are In Now

Impeachment has been tried but never worked. Declaring incapacity has never been attempted, and a vigorous, feisty executive does not seem like the person on which to try out this process for he first time. Inducing a resignation seems like the path most likely to succeed and least likely to result in harmful precedent.

Consider President Trump. He has not dedicated his life to statesmanship or politics, and his sense of legacy is not invested in his public works. He can walk away without feeling diminished, blaming others for obstructing his attempts.

He has dedicated his life to wealth and power, and to Trump as a brand. Threatening that would surely give him pause.

Suppose the emoluments clause were invoked to require him to actually divest all interest in, and knowledge of the operations of, the Trump Organization; to require it to change its name to something that does not exploit the presidential connection; and to cease all contact with the principals of the Organization, whether family or not. Rather than submit to such rigorous ethics and constitutional constraints, would he resign? Perhaps.

Keep Eyes on the Prize

The biggest risk in all this talk of impeachment is that it will distract us from the real task at hand. Our country went astray before Trump was elected. In fact, he was elected in large part because voters saw his lack of political experience as an asset, in sharp contrast to pro politicians who opposed him in the primaries, and his dynastic opponent in the general election, whom many voters felt belonged to a professional political elite that was responsible for the morass that Washington has become. We overlooked his obvious shortcomings and underestimated the hucksterism that he, to his credit, made no effort to conceal, because we wanted to change Washington and correct the social inequities that plutocracy was producing. We believed him when he said he was going to “drain the swamp.” We voted for something new, and we got it, but it turned out to be something very different from what we longed for.

“This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” –Donald Trump

Freeing the White House from its current occupant will not free the country from the coalition of ideologues, starry-eyes hopefuls, foreign operatives, and nincompoops who put him there. Replacement of the president is only a tool in the central task of rebuilding America as a nation of principle, vision and hope. To do this we must begin respecting one another again, listening and compromising for the benefit of majority and minority alike, and forsaking the tyranny of a narrow but iron-willed majority. We must learn not just to tolerate, not just to respect, but to revere our diversity for the richness and strength it bestows on us. We must wrest power from the plutocrats and restore it to an inclusive electorate. We must build bridges that bring us together, not walls that keep us apart. We must embrace and reinvigorate Lincoln’s ideal, that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Compared to that real task lying before us, simply removing a president from office seems like a walk in the park.

Donald Trump did not invent the tweet, nor the political tweet. Not even the presidential tweet. The art of the epigram, or tweet, has been around for centuries, and many masters have come and gone. Consider this gem, tweeted fully half a millenium ago, which practically defines the genre:

The history of the tweet goes way farther back than that. Over a millennium earlier, another gifted twittermeister had a nearly identical thought:

Nor is this the oldest surviving tweet. This one comes from two centuries earlier:

The turn of the 18th century was a fruitful time for the tweet. Alexander Pope’s long poems barely survive, but the tweets he set like jewels within them continue to gleam . I know you’ve heard this one:

and this one, which might have been a DM to President Trump:

Trump may have passed on the inspirational tweets of Pope, preferring the acerbic wit of Pope’s contemporary, Jonathan Swift. If this tweet had been written in he first person singular, it might have come from Trump himself:

Although all of Swift’s wisdom might not be welcome:

These tweets ushered in the Age of Enlightenment, which may have brought us the greatest tweeter of all time:

Franklin may not have invented the political tweet, but he certainly perfected it. His advice to American patriots is remembered long after the war ended.

He could be a lot more pointed, too. This one foreshadows John C. Calhoun’s warnings, fifty years later, about the tyranny of the majority.

The presidential tweet was a natural follower of the political tweet. It first reached full flower in the hands of a master—President Abraham Lincoln.

Both Roosevelts had the knack, too. Theodore Roosevelt, who actually made his living as a best-selling author both before and after his presidency, had this advice to the common man:

This advice, intended for presidents but widely applicable, is perhaps TRs most successful tweet:

The mid 20th century brought a virtual golden age of the political tweet, including the presidential tweet:

Franklin Roosevelt was a Democrat, and his tweets sometimes seem to address the 21st century GOP, enhancing his status as a political clairvoyant:

And there is this DM to Paul Ryan from both Roosevelts:

Other memorable 20th century presidential tweets include Truman’s about where the buck stops, Eisenhower’s to beware the military-industrial complex, and Kennedy’s plea to ask not what your country can do…etc. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, was a master of the presidential tweet.

Even into the twenty first century, the presidential tweet flourished. The homespun, self-deprecating humor that sometimes bubbled up in presidential tweets from Lincoln to Reagan became a dominant theme in the opening decades.

In 2016 the nature of the presidential tweet changed. Previous presidents used Tweets to communicate directly with their constituents, humanizing their images. The humor let us see brief glimpses into the hearts of the men who occupied the Oval Office. Policy and fact did not enter into most of these tweets; this would have not been consistent with their intimate purpose.

Donald Trump has changed all that. He seems oddly unwilling, or unable, to relate to people on a human level. His tweets seem aimed at manipulation rather than revelation. They are seldom humorous, except for a ubiquitous, smarmy sarcasm, and they never self-deprecating. They are chockablock full of “alternative facts” unencumbered by even a hint of proof. This made up data is often used to defend nasty attacks on people and institutions that without them would have no foundation at all.

They are sometimes laced with a creepy paranoia which feels particularly out of place in a President of the United States and Commander in Chief.

Perhaps saddest of all, the literary quality of these neo-epigrams vanished when their purpose became propaganda. I know that this has no significance in the grand political scheme of things. The epigram—the tweet—has been an art form for millennia; I hate to see it go. In the end, cultures are remembered by the art they leave behind, often in the remains of practical objects: shards of pottery, battered cutlery, bits of personal adornment. If artificial intelligence ever scans the autistic, ADD-riven snippets of our government today, they will surely conclude that there were virtual Visigoths at our cybergate.

Earth Day & the Unicorn

Do you associate Earth Day with Ira Einhorn, the Unicorn? Well, don’t!

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Unicorns

From the German, the surname Einhorn could be translated “one horn”. Perhaps this was among the reasons that Ira Einhorn, America’s consummate hippie on the 1970s, liked to call himself the Unicorn. Unicorns possessed mystical qualities that must have appealed to Ira as well. A touch of its horn could heal the sick and purify water. It was irresistibly drawn to virgins, who were used as bait during medieval unicorn hunts.

Leonardo DaVinci wrote in his notebooks:

The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear, it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.

Because of its affinity for virgins, medieval Christian iconography frequently showed a unicorn with the Virgin Mother. It came to represent the annunciation, and even Jesus Himself.

However, the legend has a dark side, too. Only a virgin can entrap this virtuous beast, and only through betrayal.

Marco Polo saw unicorns quite differently. They were, he wrote:

…scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead… They have a head like a wild boar’s… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions.

Polo seems to be describing the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) which were common south central Asia in his day, though now they are rare and endangered. A mostly nocturnal animal, they were seen by day most often through the shifting morning mists of their wetland habitat. Generally peaceful, a male was prone to deadly violence when another male challenged his choice of mate.

Two very different kinds of unicorn, both embodied by Ira Einhorn: the counterculture peacenik with aspiration to the mystical, who liked to call himself the Unicorn; and the angry lover and venal beast who, spurned by his girlfriend, became the Unicorn Killer.

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The Unicorn Killer

Born into a middle-class Pennsylvania family, Einhorn studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he became involved in the anti-war and nascent ecological movements. Bearded, charismatic, and iconoclastic, Ira rose to prominence as Philadelphia’s #1 Hippie. He advocated free love, peace and flower power. On the first Earth Day in 1970, he became a sort of master of ceremonies for the live broadcast of outdoor events scheduled in Philadelphia. It was a role that suited him well, appealing to his broad narcissistic streak. He later claimed that Earth Day was his idea, and that he had been instrumental in organizing events across the country. Other organizers challenge his account, and in fact, there is no record of his having done any organizing.

Helen ‘Holly’ Maddux, flower child, was a stunning blonde from Tyler, Texas, attending Bryn Mawr College near Philly when she was drawn into the powerful vortex of the Unicorn. During the years they lived together, though, Holly discovered that Ira had a dark side, jealous and verbally (at least) abusive. After five years, she had had enough. She moved to New York, and became involved with another man. Incensed, Einhorn threatened to throw her remaining belongings into the street if she did not come personally to collect them. Against the advice of friends and family, she returned to Philadelphia to retrieve her things. She was never seen alive again.

Meanwhile, Einhorn was cultivating new contacts among the local politicians and corporate bigwigs. Philadelphia’s upper crust invited him to elite parties; businesses hired him as their consultant for marketing to a counterculture growing ever more affluent. On graduating from Penn, he had become a professional hippie, and was turning it into a lucrative career—a con man for the Age of Aquarius. Yes, he told the police when they asked after Holly, she had been to the apartment, but she had gone to the co-op for tofu and sprouts, and never returned.

A year after Holly’s disappearance, neighbors noticed a nasty smell emanating from Einhorn’s apartment. This annoyed but did not surprise, for his personal hygiene and housekeeping were both suspect, consistent with his status as a grown-up flower child. Then the downstairs neighbors complained of a foul, reddish-brown liquid dripping into their apartment from Einhorn’s apartment, directly above.

When police responded, a nude Einhorn met them at the door. He offered no resistance as they searched his apartment. In his bedroom closet, they found a steamer trunk that contained shards of Styrofoam, crumpled newspaper, piles of air fresheners, and the decomposed remains of a woman, her skull smashed by multiple blows with a heavy object.

“Looks like we found Holly Maddox,” said the officer to the Unicorn. “You found what you found,” was Ira’s sardonic reply.

At his arraignment he was represented by Arlen Specter, who would soon begin a 30-year career in the U.S. Senate, represented Ira. Arguing that his client was a nice Jewish boy from a good family who posed no peril to the public or risk of flight, Arlen got his bail reduced to $40,000. The $4000 bond was paid by one of his wealthy society patrons. He immediately fled to Europe and remained on the lam for 20 years. He had already been arraigned, though, and his trial went forward. In 1993, he was convicted in absentia of the murder of Holly Maddux. He got life in prison with no possibility of parole.

When he was finally located in France, extradition was difficult. France had abolished the death penalty, and the treaty provided that they need not return a prisoner to a country that might execute him. In 1972, the U.S Supreme court had suspended capital punishment until each state’s procedure could be reviewed and found to comply with the 8th amendment proscription of cruel and unusual punishment (Furman v. Georgia 408 US 238-1972). In 1977, when the murder had occurred, Pennsylvania had not undergone that review; hence, Einhorn could not be executed then, and could not be now. After four more years of haggling, France was compelled to return him to Philadelphia to stand trial.

At a new trial, the Unicorn’s defense was (pardon the pun) outside the box. His power and righteousness had been so great back then, and his knowledge of secret government mind-control projects so damning, that unidentified enemies (the CIA or the KGB?), in a nefarious plot to neutralize him, had murdered Holly and planted her body in his apartment as a frame. In self-defense, and out of respect for her vegan beliefs, he had decided to compost her in his closet.

Had he produced reasonable doubt? Hardly. A jury took just two hours of deliberation to convict him of first degree murder. He is serving life without parole.

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Earth Day

Earth Day, by the way, was the idea of Gaylord Nelson, A Democrat who served as governor and senator for the great state of Wisconsin, and steadfastly refused credit for this signal achievement, preferring to believe that it just growed, like Topsy. Still, his conservation chops put him in a league with Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and John Muir. In 1946, he married Carrie Lee Dotson, a nurse he had met during his military service; both she and the marriage were going strong when he died at 89 of heart failure. He had no use for colorful nicknames or boastful claims. He just rolled up his sleeves (he was equally at home in denim and linen) and went to work. He was the real deal.

As governor, Nelson’s overhaul of the state’s natural resource program brought him national recognition as the “conservation governor.” He took a chaotic bureaucracy and transformed it into a single Department of Resource Development. He established the Youth Conservation Corps that created green jobs for over 1,000 unemployed young people in the state. He fought to earmark $50 million for the Outdoor Recreation Action Program (ORAP) to acquire land for public parks and wilderness areas. The extreme popularity of his achievements in conservation paved Nelson’s road to the U.S. Senate in 1962.

In 1969, having seen the empowerment derived from campus activism in the 1960s, Nelson proposed a day when citizens across the country would host events, preferably outdoors, to raise awareness of environmental problems, and encourage grass-roots political involvement. April, a season of rebirth and hope, seemed the perfect time.

Judy Moody and Denis Hayes, staffers in the office of US Senator Gaylord Nelson, begin planning for the Environmental Teach-In, which became the first Earth Day

His proposal brought immediate, overwhelming support. National media widely broadcast the plans for this so-called “Earth Day” and enthusiastic letters flooded into Nelson’s office. Engaged crowds turned out for planned events from coast to coast, including the one in Philly with the sleazy MC who wanted us to believe he dreamed the whole thing up. He did not. He was a charlatan, and ultimately a killer, who scammed a nation and then ran away

Nelson created a small national office to offer support to the thousands of grassroots efforts that sprung up everywhere, but he firmly rejected any top-down organization. “Earth Day planned itself,” he later reflected, and in fact, it did, with just a nudge from Nelson. An estimated 20 million Americans, young and old, gathered on April 22, 1970 to confront the ecological troubles in their cities, states, nation, and planet—and to demand action from themselves and from their elected officials.

Today, with so many of the environmental protections in peril from short-sighted attacks on regulation in any form, and greedy corporate interests that see that valuable natural resources now in public trust may soon become vulnerable to seizure by plutocrats for private gain.

This Earth Day, help the unicorns’ magical horns clean the water and heal the sick planet. Let it doze not in the lap of a chaste maiden who will betray it, but in the mighty arms of mother Gaia, whom we can trust. Let us gather behind them like a conquering horde, and advance together to make the Earth a better place tomorrow than it was yesterday.